The Moor
by Tinn Tam
Summary: The location of the grave was not marked by anything; for forty years, the earth covering it had been arid and crackled, and odd things had been known to happen in these parts of the moor. And still Minerva McGonagall came here, year after year, to contemplate the curse that had come from her to contaminate the moor now enclosing it.


First, there was nothing. Just a naked slab of rain-polished rock standing isolated in the moor, surrounded by rows upon rows of prickly vegetation that dug famished roots into an avaricious soil. The heath ran as far as the eye could see, in supple slopes and distant marshes under a low sky, until earth and firmament met at the end and melted away in a single grey line.

Then there was a woman.

She came from nowhere and suddenly stood upon the slab, tall and straight-backed, something imperious and severe in the lines of her face. Ageless, with dark hair streaked with grey and pulled back in a bun; dark blue eyes that expressed nothing behind a pair of rectangular glasses. She stood there as though she belonged in the moor, a small battered suitcase at her side.

She cast a long searching eye around her and found her marks immediately. There, at a little distance under the mattress of beige and purple, was the place where she came back in pilgrimage, year after year, when August retreated to the south after failing to tame the Scottish moorland.

She set the suitcase carefully upon the rock and stepped off it and into the moor, her black robes billowing behind her and catching in the shrub. She headed west, her head held straight and her eyes focused on the horizon, while her feet followed an invisible path without tripping once. It was like seeing a large, black bird edging its solitary way through the purple heath.

She walked for maybe half an hour, although it seemed longer to her; it always did. Phantom sounds echoed in her ears, mingling with the ululating wind, replaying for her the first time she had walked this way, four decades ago. There had been the trampling steps of the carpenter, just ahead of her, carrying effortlessly in his arms the tiny pine box he had so obligingly accepted to make. The murmurs of her black mourning dress and veil dragging over the heath — not that she wore them for the minuscule corpse inside the coffin, no; it was not proper for her to mourn her own sin. The black veil was for the two bodies laid to rest in the small graveyard of her village.

The unshed tears that burnt her eyes, the hatred that consumed her soul, however—those were all she could offer to the small thing that had been ripped from her in a shower of blood.

The hatred was gone, now, at long last; its object was dead. Minerva McGonagall could now mourn.

She knew the exact location of the clandestine grave, just beside swamps, where the soil was soft. It was not marked by anything; for forty years, the earth covering it had been arid and crackled. Odd things had been known to happen over these parts of the moor, and the nearby marshes had closed over more than one corpse. And still Minerva McGonagall came here, year after year, to contemplate the curse that had come from her to contaminate the moor now enclosing it.

The ground dropped, revealing the place. Professor McGonagall froze on the spot.

A handful of thistle swung lightly, ugly and obstinate, over her child's grave as though over conquered land.

* * *

The McGonagalls' birthplace had been a secluded village of few inhabitants, most of them Muggles, most of them getting slowly, inexorably old. Youngsters didn't stay long there; farms and workshops were dying for lack of people strong enough to take them over. The McGonagalls were the only wizarding dwelling in the place. Their children, a boy and a girl, had both stepped into adult age a long time ago — and yet, just like their parents before them, none of them showed the slightest hint of getting older. The rest of the population regarded the family with wariness and envy.

All in all it was no wonder that, when scandal struck the McGonagalls at last, all the gossipers of the village gathered round to share the news, with looks of fake dismay upon their faces and ill-concealed delight in their voices. Huddled up on the village square next to the war memorial, in their old skirts and aprons that flapped about their skinny legs, they looked like a flock of dishevelled pigeons.

"Are you sure —"

"My Miranda saw her when she went in there to give Esther McGonagall a few eggs. She said the girl's at least six months pregnant."

"The little slut! She puts on airs and graces with us, then she goes and gets herself in trouble with a man!"

"Yes, but who?"

At this, the women shared dark, but puzzled looks.

"That Doug Burnett — he never got married, that's suspicious."

"He was away on a trip, remember? Got back in town only two months ago. Maybe young Kyle… I thought he looked at her quite a bit last Christmas…"

The Kyle in question had a great-aunt who sputtered with indignation. "_My _Kyle is a good boy, he knows how to behave himself! And he wouldn't look twice at a sullen skinny girl, especially when no one can even tell how old she is! What about your girl's husband, Moira? _He_ comes from the big city, and they have no morals there!"

The discussion dissolved into furious squabble, and the old birds separated with promises they would never speak to each other again.

Each went home with the news, and the village soon spoke of nothing other than Minerva McGonagall's pregnancy. The girl stopped venturing out of her house, and soon her mother followed her example. The other villagers were shunned from the McGonagall home. Rumours spread through the shabby dwellings like a typhus epidemic; it was said old Esther refused to speak or look at her daughter, who lived recluse in her bedroom. Her father and brother could be seen at the pub sometimes, but they were so sombre and forbidding that few were those who ventured to talk to them.

One morning, Kenneth Brodie disappeared; the previous night he had been seen at the pub openly mocking Cormag McGonagall about his sister's predicament. Brodie's mother found a goat in his bed — a goat that, to add insult to injury, had a back leg shorter than the other; just like Brodie.

From then no one disturbed the McGonagalls, and the inhabitants gave the house a wide berth.

Two months slipped by. The last Sunday of August came and found Douglas Burnett, the carpenter, enjoying a cigarette at the door of his workshop. It was one of the newest buildings and stood just a bit outside the village, straying along the road that led into wild moorland.

This was how, as the sun sank behind a thick cluster of clouds, as shadows and lights fled across the moiré heath, Burnett was the first to see a stranger heading towards the village. It was odd: one minute the land was as deserted as ever, then Burnett blinked, and here he was — a tall man wearing a long black coat and a hood, striding across the moor with no regard for the thorny bushes or the marshes that slowed even the locals.

The carpenter watched him approach with increasing discomfort, which he could not explain to himself. Sunlight died just as the stranger stepped on the road. Burnett's dread increased: it was stupid, but he felt as though that man had extinguished the sun — as though he _brought_ obscurity with him.

Still he stayed on his threshold, and when the stranger drew level with him, called out as joyously as he could, "Evening!"

The man barely slowed but he turned his head towards Burnett as he passed him. The motion was very slight; however it was just enough for Burnett to glimpse a horribly pale face under the hood and the fugitive reddish gleam of the man's eyes.

The vision was gone in a second. Burnett's tongue seemed to have been glued to the roof of his mouth and his lungs would not expel the breath they hold. An absurd terror rose unimpeded from his insides and grabbed him at the throat, and he found himself shaking in an air that had suddenly turned ice-cold. Mesmerised, he followed with his eyes the dark apparition as it made its way to the nearby McGonagall house.

He could not explain it — but he did not want to see the stranger open the door and disappear inside. With one last great shudder, he rushed back inside his home, locked the door and went to retrieve a bottle of whisky from a shelf.

Meanwhile, the stranger had drawn a long, thin wand from inside his cloak. The door of the McGonagall cottage opened soundlessly when he stepped in front of it; he bowed his head to slip inside and found himself in the family's kitchen.

He stared slowly around, his eyes resting on the sink, the gleaming copper pans aligned against the wall, the sturdy table of unpainted wood, the hard-backed chairs, the dark-tiled floor. Was that really where she lived? How could she content herself with this? A lost house in a lost, abandoned countryside, in the midst of Muggles…

He kept his wand at the ready, in case he would have to dispose of her parents or brother. She had never spoken of her family, or indeed of this place, but of course he had known. Nothing could be hidden from him.

However the house was absolutely silent. He ascended the stairs, quiet as a gust of wind, and found himself in a narrow corridor leading to several other rooms. Countless portraits of glorious ancestors glared at him from the walls; as he stood there pondering his next step, one of them shouted in a rough, deep voice, "What business do you have here, stranger?"

He took two slow steps forward and considered the portrait who had spoken, a dark-haired knight in armour who bled from a wound at the throat. He smiled.

"I am no stranger," he whispered.

He had a fast, snapping move of his wrist, and dark opaque veils fell in front of the portraits, muffling their yells of outrage. The knight's challenge had raised the only inhabitant, though. From behind the door on his immediate right came a screeching of chair legs being dragged across the floor, followed by heavy footsteps. Then before the visitor could react at all, the door flew forward and crashed at his feet as it was blasted off its hinges.

"Drop your wand!" commanded a female voice through the cloud of dust; a dark shape was just visible, holding him at wandpoint.

He smiled again.

"Hello, Minerva," he said.

The dust cleared, revealing in the doorframe a young woman with long black hair that enveloped her whole, like a dark, silky bride's veil. Her face, a little too sharp to be called pretty, showed unmistakeable signs of a serious illness. Her skin had gone sallow; her eyes were now circled with purple shadows and her cheeks were hollowed. Even her posture was different from what it had been on the last time he had seen her, months ago.

"Tom?" she said incredulously; she had not lowered her wand, and her hand did not shake.

He spread his arms wide, in sign of good faith.

"I don't go by that name anymore," he said. "But yes, it is I. May I come in?"

Slow seconds passed, ticked away by a clock on the ground floor. At long last she dropped her wand arm and took two steps backwards, allowing him in.

He started forward then abruptly froze. Minerva's motion had brought her body within the flickering light thrown into the room by a small fire; now he could see more clearly the way she dug her heels into the ground, projected her hips forward and her shoulders backwards. He could also see the cause of it all despite the loose grey robes hanging on her frame: the round, grotesquely distorted belly, clinging to her waist like a large tumour.

"What," he breathed out in a very low whisper, "is _that?_"

A mirthless smile cast a shadow upon her face.

"You mean this disgusting proof that I'm just another slut, getting in trouble because of a man who drops off the country for months at a time and doesn't answer owls?"

She jutted out her swollen belly, her face still distorted by that mocking sneer.

"Don't do that," Tom said quietly. "It makes you ugly."

"You think?" she replied, still more quietly. "Speaking of, what happened to you, Tom? What happened to your face, to your eyes? What have you been doing?"

At last he followed her inside the room and, with a flick of his wand, repaired the broken door and made it fit back into its frame. Minerva stood before the fireplace with her feet slightly apart, the heel of a hand on the small of her back and her other hand tapping her wand distractedly against her leg. He enveloped her in a long, appraising gaze, trying to take in her new aspect, to fit it into his plans.

"I will tell you, in time, what I have been doing," he said. "Sit down."

It was an order, rather than a request. However Minerva looked too tired to fight and she obeyed without questions, both hands coming to rest on her belly. He sat in a chair opposite hers.

"I now go by another name," he continued. "And this name I want you to use. My friends call me Voldemort."

"I know," she said with no emotion. "I read the newspapers. I didn't like what I saw."

"It's all lies," he softly said. "Lies from envious fools. I am here to fulfil the promise I made you —"

"You never promised me anything."

He smiled and leant over so the light licked his face, trying not to pay attention to Minerva's belly. The sight annoyed him, for some reason.

"I promised to myself," he went on, "that you would be at my side on my way to greatness. When you'll walk out of here with me, no one, Muggle or wizard, will ever dare disrespect you — or they will suffer my wrath. I came to offer you what you deserve, and what only I can give you."

"You gave me this," she retorted, with a gesture down her front.

He knew she was telling the truth. He always knew.

"And I will deal with it, as I should. Don't worry about that." He planted his eyes into hers so she would know, too, that he would keep his word. "I will deal with it, whether you come with me tonight or not."

Minerva shifted her hips with a slight grimace. "Come with you… to what? To where? When I saw you eight months ago, when we —"

She broke off, as an emotion he had never seen before crossed her face, too fleeting for him to make out. Diverting her eyes to stare into the fire, she went on, "When I saw you then, you had already started this… this change that shows on your face. I don't even know why I yielded to you. It had been years, and suddenly you were right in front of me, saying you were about to leave, that I had to wait — wait for what, Merlin only knows — and you were gone before I even woke up. What have you been doing, Tom? Where have you gone? Why are you here now? What do you want from me?"

The questions spilt from her mouth as if they had been held inside her for too long. Voldemort was only half-listening: his eyes kept being drawn back to Minerva's distorted belly, which rested on her lap like a monstrous pet. A cold certitude came to him then, as unyielding as the universe, as absolute as his own power. It had to go. His blood was too precious to be shared and passed on. He was too far above the human condition to breed. The mere thought brought in him a heart-twisting disgust such as he had not known since he had laid eyes on his Muggle father.

It had to go. And the mother — the mother had to shrivel into nonexistence by his side, or die here and there.

For the second time in his life it inhabited him, that sense of cold purpose that guided his steps, made room for no hesitation, no afterthought. He knew exactly, as though the scenes were unravelling before his eyes, what was going to happen. But he had to give her this one last chance. He had projects for her; she was not absolutely necessary but she would open a lot of doors for him, save him a lot of time.

He had a ghostly smile. But she was not absolutely necessary.

"Minerva," he said, and he enjoyed the deadly calm of his voice, the way it bit the air like frost and chilled the entire room, the way every single thing, dead or alive, seemed now frozen to the spot and subjected to his words.

She turned to him eyes that glistened with fever. The foetus was making her sick. His very blood was making her sick — and it was no wonder. His power was such, how could it not burn her? How could she ever be powerful enough to host the flesh of his flesh without being destroyed? He had only been in her presence for a few minutes, and already he understood so much more than she did…

"You are dying, Minerva," he brutally said, and she recoiled in her seat, hit by the absolute truth of his words. "Your pregnancy is killing you. No one has the power to save you; no one except me. You can come with me, and live — or die here."

She went livid. He saw fear, anger and doubt mingling and fighting behind her eyes. He watched with calm satisfaction as fear and despair overcame her strong nature. He waited for the words of submission that were already forming on her lips.

And then, below, a booming voice called, "Who left the bloody door open? It's freezing in here!"

Voldemort's chair clattered to the floor when he jumped to his feet with incredible speed; he instinctively glanced towards the bedroom door, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Minerva move.

His hand blurred, his wand drawing level with her, the lethal words already half-spoken. But she had not tried to curse him or even opened her mouth to scream.

She had Disapparated.

He heard the dull thud of her feet hitting the floor in the corridor, and without transition, without warning, the entire house shook with a terrible scream of pain.

The door was blasted to pieces for the second time that night; Voldemort's spell was so powerful it swept away a good chunk of wall, and he rushed through falling dust and rubble into the corridor. The scream still pierced his ears.

All his life Voldemort would remember in precise details the murders he had performed. Murder brought him a sense of completion, of superiority, that remained unsurpassed no matter how incredible his other achievements were. He was ending a life less worthy than his. He was cleansing the world, relieving his eyes, suppressing those too weak to use magic as it should be used.

And all his life, Voldemort would remember the sight of Minerva McGonagall howling in atrocious pain, kneeling on the topmost step of the staircase, both of her hands gripping the banister for support, while blood rushed out of her body and cascaded down the steps. A young man, almost a boy, had run up the stairs and thrown his arms around her with a terrified expression on his face. Behind him, white-haired, square-jawed and thick as an ox, another man was running up the slippery steps with his wand out.

Taking in the whole scene had lasted a split-second; then the older man spotted Voldemort and raised his wand with the bellow of a charging bull. Green flashed across the house, the river of blood glistened black and the faces of the McGonagall siblings shone, pale as bone. The noise made by their father's body as it tumbled down the stairs was thunderous; it drowned the boy's scream.

The corpse had not yet hit the kitchen floor when the youngest McGonagall started waving his wand wildly, without pausing for breath, sending a flurry of spells down the corridor. Voldemort blocked two of them with derisory easiness while the others flew about him, lighting his path and his person with magic. He was about to kill the pair when the boy did something strange, something absurd: grasping firmly his sister around the middle, he threw both of them down the stairs.

Voldemort was at the top of the stairs in two strides; brother and sister were hurtling down the steps, their limbs closely entwined. He stopped and calmly, purposefully aimed. Both bodies jerked when the beam of green light hit them.

Then all was still.

Voldemort gazed down at the three bodies spread out on the kitchen tiles. He did not know who had been hit by his spell. Minerva might only be unconscious from the blood loss, or the boy might have hit his head or broken his neck on the way down. He had to check, of course. It was safer to make sure they were all dead, that _it_ would not live.

However, he had barely taken two steps down the blood-stained stairs that a great fire burst into life inside the cavernous kitchen fireplace. The flames grew tall and turned green, and in a second, a figure was seen spinning inside. A tall, silvery-haired, long-bearded, bespectacled figure.

This time he had no choice. He knew it, as certainly as he had known he would have to snuff out the life growing in Minerva's body. Dumbledore could not see him — not yet. Voldemort Disapparated without making a sound.

Half a second later, Albus Dumbledore burst out of the fireplace and dashed to the bodies that lay in a pool of Minerva's blood.

Voldemort Apparated just outside the village, torn by conflicting urges. He burnt with fury at Dumbledore stealing his rightful prey, he was terrified that the foetus might still live, and yet he knew that lingering in this place would compromise his plans more surely than leaving at once; even if it meant giving Minerva's child a chance at survival.

He clenched his teeth, willing his mind into cold determination again. The blood Minerva was losing might indicate her spawn was dead — she had Apparated, after all, and she was not supposed to do that at this stage of her pregnancy. However, if by some awful twist of fate, the creature was to survive — he would know. No one could hide anything from him. He would know, and if it had survived, he would kill it then.

As he cast his eyes around, Voldemort realised he had Apparated right behind the house where lived the Muggle who had seen him arrive. He raised his wand in a last gesture to appease his fury, his disappointment. The house burst into billowing flames that threw a violent light over the spot where Voldemort had stood, and where there was now nothing to see.

* * *

Dumbledore knew, at once, what had happened — what no one else could suspect. Discarding the dead bodies of old McGonagall and his son, he knelt beside Minerva and slid his fingers over her neck. He found a pulse there, desperately fast and thready, hanging on to life through the blood loss that, still now, drenched her thighs and dampened her robes.

He did not waste a second. Placing a hand on the dying woman's belly, he said a word; his wand responded with a purple pulsing light. Dumbledore's face darkened and he started muttering inaudibly, while his wand moved over Minerva's belly in complicated and graceful patterns. The blood flow receded, was reduced to a trickle. Her bare legs were covered in a mosaic of dark blue blotchiness. Dumbledore, whose face was turning grey under the strain, could feel her pulse speeding up under his fingers.

Just as he felt her life was slipping inexorably away, her eyes fluttered open and focused on him; she did not seem surprised to see him at her side. She licked her lips and whispered between two rattling breaths, "I have… to get rid of it… it's killing me, he said it, he warned me…"

"Breathe, Minerva," Dumbledore said on a tone of command. "Think of nothing but your breath. I'm handling the rest."

But she was not listening to him, she was concentrating her strengths, he could feel her tightening her exhausted muscles. The idea of paralysing her crossed his mind — then he abandoned it. It would do more harm than good; she was too strong-willed.

"Stop, Dumbledore."

The Headmaster glanced over his shoulder and found Esther McGonagall standing behind him. Tall and skinny as a bird of prey, her face less expressive than a marble statue's, she clutched a shawl around her shoulders; Dumbledore saw, standing ajar in a remote corner, the door behind which she had hidden all evening. The corpses of her husband and son were reflected on her glasses, but she was not watching them: her eyes were planted on her daughter.

"Do as I say, Dumbledore. Let her die. She drove her brother and her father to their deaths, she drove her mother to hiding in shame, and now she's giving birth to a mongrel on the floor of her ancestors' house, like a bitch on a carpet—"

"Esther," Dumbledore said, with the same deadly calm Voldemort had expressed minutes earlier, "You can either go back to holing yourself up in that room, or I will force you to leave this place for ever."

He had not looked at her as he spoke, choosing to focus again on the woman spread at his feet. He helped her as much as he could, yet knew that now it all depended on her. The wait was not very long. Her breath suddenly exploded and her body expelled, in one last heaving effort, a mess of flesh, blood and membranes.

Esther's voice cut the silence.

"It's dead, at least."

* * *

The child had been male. She did not know why, but she felt it was an important fact. Tom Riddle's male child had sapped her strengths for eight months; as the pregnancy progressed she had become possessed with a strange yet steely conviction: that she would die and the child would live. There had been such vitality in him, such greediness in the way he had sucked the life out of her, that she had realised her only way to survive was to kill him while he was still vulnerable and dependent on her.

She had always known, however, that she would never be able to do it. In a flash of wounded pride she had resolved to fight and come out victorious; to rip the child from his father's deadly influence — for he also was _her_ child, _her_ flesh and blood. She had decided Tom Riddle was wrong.

Of course, she had Disapparated. She had splinched, badly, and the consequences were severe: the foetus had been killed instantly. And she would never have children again.

She did not care. No man would ever rival Voldemort; his power, his intensity, his calm determination, everything that made him the greatest wizard of his generation and the darkest of the century, had run through her like lightning. She could never content herself with another man. Not after Voldemort.

She had been fascinated by him, dazzled yet horrified, and now she hated him with passion such as she had never known before. She would fight him, yes, with every breath she drew, every minute she lived. She would fight the war for the wizarding world, and the one battle between the two of them that he had not won yet.

Douglas Burnett suddenly stopped. Minerva McGonagall was so taken in her musings that she nearly walked into him, halting just in time when he said in a strained voice, "That's it, Miss McGonagall, I can't go no further."

Minerva lifted her mourning veil to look up at the carpenter. Terror was painted all over his face and sweat beaded at his forehead; the arms that held the tiny coffin shook as though sagging under a great weight.

"It's fine here," said Minerva. "You can put it down."

Although it was clear Burnett could not wait until he had put some distance between him and the coffin, he insisting on digging the grave himself. Minerva stood rigid under the dark-grey sky as he worked. It was the first of September; a new school year started. In her pocket was a letter from Dumbledore, informing her that he would gladly offer her the post of Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts, should she want it. She was to board the Knight Bus later that night.

"There you go, Miss," said Burnett, pulling himself out of the grave. He lowered the coffin into the soft soil with infinite care, then straightened up to stand beside it, his cap held maladroitly in his hand.

"Want to say something, Miss McGonagall?" he ventured.

She looked up at him, again. "Do you, Doug?"

He looked vaguely apprehensive. "I — I could try."

Minerva McGonagall looked down at the coffin that contained the remains of her stillborn child, while the carpenter cleared his throat and spoke in a slightly wavering voice.

"Goodbye then, little…"

"James," Minerva whispered.

"Little James. It's not your fault. You would've had a lovely mum. I hope you'll be at peace."

Minerva nodded. "It's perfect, Doug."

The carpenter looked immensely relieved, and, having furtively crossed himself, he put his cap on his head again and started dropping the dirt back into the grave, over the little coffin. Then they both made their way slowly back through the moor.

"I hope I wasn't inappropriate, Miss McGonagall," said the carpenter. "Y'know, when I said he would've had a lovely mum. I didn't mean anything wrong, it's just… he would've had."

Minerva had a small, thin-lipped smile. "It was alright. I'm sorry your house burnt down."

"Don't worry about that, Miss. I'm alive, eh? Lucky me, too. I would've stayed holed up in that house all night — I had a feeling something wrong was going on out there, see — but when I heard you scream I thought you might be in trouble with the baby, and since the only midwife we had at the village was yourself, I ran out to fetch a midwife in the next village…"

"Thank you," she said softly.

They came into sight of the blackened, smoking remains of Burnett's house, and Minerva froze on the spot.

"It's a little impressive," said Burnett, misinterpreting her reaction.

"I — yes, it is," she replied, her mind elsewhere. "Douglas, would you mind… would you please walk the rest of the way without me? I'd like to be on my own a little."

There was a look of such concern, such deep pity on his face that she preferred averting her eyes.

"Sure thing, Miss. Be safe, eh?"

She watched him walk off with her throat constricted with guilt, because she knew she could never pay her debt to him. However she had had no choice but to send him off — otherwise he might have noticed the skeletal winged black horse that had just alighted a little further on the moorland, and its silver-haired, silver-bearded, plum-robed rider.

"Is there anything wrong, Professor Dumbledore?" she asked as she drew level with the horse. "Shouldn't you be at the feast?"

"My dear Professor, the Hogwarts Express will not be arriving before two hours; and the castle is barely fifteen minutes from here, as the Thestral flies."

"Thestral?" Minerva reached up to pat the neck of the horse. "I'd never seen one before."

"Yes," Dumbledore gently said. "I thought so."

Minerva buried her fingers into the Thestral's rough mane so as to avoid looking at the Headmaster.

"How can I help you, Dumbledore?" she said, more abruptly than she had intended.

"I wanted to give you a lift to the castle, actually. I have here a saddle which should be quite comfortable. Hagrid made it specifically on my request."

"Thank you," she said stiffly. "But you don't need to bother. I'll get there myself."

She could hear the smile in Dumbledore's voice, and something else — was it pride? — when he replied, "Ah, but I was hoping you'd agree to get to the castle sooner. We have a special guest at Hogwarts tonight, and he is, I'm afraid, in a very bad situation. I need your help."

Minerva detached her eyes from the bony neck of the beast and threw at him an inquisitive look.

"A couple of old friends of mine were having lunch with me today," Dumbledore elaborated. "It was the wife's first pregnancy, but as she's not all that young she did not fare so well. She went into labour just after lunch. The child will be premature, and I'm afraid his mother won't be able to feed him. I left her in the care of our new nurse — Poppy Pomfrey, a very fresh young girl — and I have to say she is quite terrorised. I seem to remember you have a little experience as a midwife."

Minerva's heart started beating fast and loud. A chance. A chance to gain the upper hand in the personal fight she was losing to Lord Voldemort. This was what Dumbledore was offering her.

"Hold on a second," she snapped.

Tearing her mourning veil from her head, she let it slide over the moor; a gust of wind seized it, twisted it in mid-air, and took it towards the marshes. She gathered her immensely long hair in her hands and tied it back in a severe bun, through which she slid her wand. Then, hiking up her skirts, she accepted Dumbledore's proffered hand and jumped into the saddle.

The Thestral's powerful wings unfolded on either side of her and she rose, high above the rippling moor, above the small graveyard, above the little coffin by the swamps. A dull pain gnawed at her lower belly, and her chest was starting to swell with milk that would never go to her son. She closed her watering eyes and gripped Dumbledore firmly around the waist.

The trip itself felt like a dream. In no time, the Thestral descended over the Astronomy Tower and alighted with surprising agility. Within fifteen minutes they were in the hospital wing, where a white-faced Pomfrey was delivering a tiny baby boy. The mother was unconscious. The father, at the head of the bed, kept his teeth clenched and had eyes only for his wife.

Minerva McGonagall stepped in and finished delivering the baby, snapping orders as she did. Miss Pomfrey bustled about her. Everything happened very fast. When, in the end, Minerva took the time to look at the tiny creature wailing in her arms, she found he did not look like her son at all.

She fed him all the same.

* * *

"You should be able to feed him with a bottle now," Minerva McGonagall said, placing the two-weeks-old baby in his mother's arms. "I just helped him go through the first few days."

The mother beamed up at her. "How could we ever —"

"By never mentioning it again," said Minerva sharply.

"At least accept to be his godmother," the mother insisted.

"Mrs Potter, I'll say it again, thank you," said Minerva, "but no. Never."

Slightly put out, Mrs Potter cradled her son in her arms and started cooing softly at him. Minerva was about to leave the hospital wing when the father spoke up, "That's a nice name you found for him. James."

She froze on the spot; a phantom pain throbbed in her belly.

"You called him James?" she uttered.

"The nurse said you've called him that since the very first day," the father said. "We liked it. It would've been stupid to change it, anyway."

She swayed a little on the spot, and her eyes automatically travelled back to the infant in his mother's arms. But no matter how many times she looked, how long or how hard she stared at him, he still did not look like her son.

"I'm glad you find it to your taste," she said. "Now I'll say goodbye to you; I have a class beginning in ten minutes."

She closed the door of the hospital wing on the vision of the happy family, and it seemed to her young Minerva McGonagall was still there with them, her own son in her arms. She straightened up and left her behind at last.

Professor McGonagall's footsteps echoed in the vast corridors of Hogwarts as she walked to her classroom.

Three months later, Voldemort came up to the castle and was denied the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for the second and last time. War broke out.

* * *

It was already dark when Professor McGonagall, having completed her fortieth pilgrimage upon the lands of her youth, briskly walked into the near-deserted village. An old hunchbacked man sat on the threshold of her childhood house, smoking a cigarette; he chewed out a vague, "Hello!" as he saw her approach.

"Hello, Doug," said McGonagall. "Is my mother here?"

The man blinked eyes that were misted up by cataracts.

"Is that Miss McGonagall?" he asked, suspicious. "Or are you just poking fun at me?"

"This is me, Doug," McGonagall repeated impatiently. "My mother, Esther — is she here?"

Doug Burnett shook his head and took his cap off, revealing a bald head. "Ah, the poor darling's gone, Miss. Not so long ago. I lived with her after my house burnt down, see, since all her kids were gone. We all thought she would outlive us all, mind — although there was something weird about her register of birth. If you added the dates, she was a hundred and fifty-two."

McGonagall's expression did not change at all. "That sounds about right. Thank you, Doug."

The old man nodded, put the pack of cigarettes inside his cap and the cap back on his head.

A little further along the street, a goat was sprawled in the dirt before the door of a derelict house. When it saw her, it laboriously got to its feet and limped its way towards her, trying to stick its nose in her suitcase. .

"Oh, for heaven's sake," McGonagall sighed, rolling her eyes. A quick glance up and down the street told her there were no witnesses; her wand slid from her sleeve into her hand and she put the tip between the goat's eyes.

There was a crack, and before her sat an overweight man of about sixty, slightly cross-eyed, one leg several inches shorter than the other.

"Go home, Ken Brodie," McGonagall snapped to the former goat. "And hold your tongue next time."

Leaving him there to sit, puzzled, in the dirt, Professor McGonagall crossed the village to the spot where she would Disapparate. Pinned to the front of her strict witch's robe was one of the grey thistle that had grown over her son's grave.

She had won her battle at last.

* * *

**A/N: I churned that out in one afternoon, no editing, no beta-reading, no wondering. Sorry.**

**I would just like to point out that if anyone - anyone at all - tries to make this story sound like a plea for, against, or about abortion, I'll just go and delete it. I don't write pleas. I don't write to defend opinions. I write Harry Potter fanfiction. I just had this one weird idea, and after I wrote it, I realised what people might think I had in mind (after all, someone said I was writing about Hitler the last time I put up a Voldemort-has-won story...). **

**In fact I had nothing in mind. Remember that, and now I just hope you liked it. **


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